Many of the ongoing collaborations between Wikimedia chapters and GLAMs concern importing pictures in Wikimedia Commons, or texts in Wikipedia or Wikisource. Wikimedia Italy is trying to expand those collaborations also to the field of open data, with the collaboration with the Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy (EAGLE).

EAGLE aims to build a multi-lingual online collection of millions of digitised items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections, which deal with inscription from the Greek and Roman World. The aim of the network is to make available the vast majority of the surviving inscriptions of the Greco-Roman world, complete with the essential information about them (now scattered in several databases across EU countries) and with a series of peer-reviewed translation in several EU languages.

Wikimedia Italia and EAGLE cooperation is active on two different levels: one is related to the upload of all photos of inscriptions which have a compatible licence (Creative Commons) to Wikimedia Commons; the other is a platform for aggregation, annotation and collaborative editing of translation of inscriptions, based on the Wikibase extensions – the same ones of Wikidata.

The project started in early 2013, and even if Wikibase was still in an early stage of development, it seemed since the very beginning the ideal fit, because it both allows for structured data (for each inscription we have identifiers, pictures, original text, peer-reviewed translations and other data), and it makes collaboration simple also for people who have no knowledge of wiki-code. At the moment, it gathered about 10,000 inscriptions from several institutions from several countries, and is to date the biggest existing database of translations of Ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions with 180 active contributors and school projects, individuals, academics and projects using it to contribute or get translations of epigraphic texts.

Also the contribution to Wikimedia Commons has been done, adopting best practices of WikiLoves Monument and using the GLAM Wiki toolset developed in collaboration with the Europeana Foundation. ca. 4000 photos have been uploaded and many more have been edited by a team of coordinated volunteers which is part of an astonishing 500 volunteers contributing to this kind of media over time. The media contained in the Category "Media Contributed by EAGLE" (i.e. edited or uploaded) have been viewed 1 Mln times x month, which is an incredible result for a niche discipline.

In this presentation we will outline the project, show the benefits of using wikibase for the Europeana Best Practice Network, as well as the next steps that we are planning to make after the integration of Wikidata with Wikimedia Commons and we look forward to having some mayan inscriptions there!

Track

GLAM Outreach / Wikidata

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)

30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Sannita: probably yes

Laurentius: probably yes

Slides or further information (optional)

TBD

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